About Me

My four decade publishing career has been a continuous post-graduate education. This blog is intended as an on going first hand account, eclectic and opinionated in nature, on a wide range of interests, from business and politics to music, literature and theater, with some family history along the way.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Google Gall

Microsoft has been called the Darth Vader of the software world but watch out, Google is gaining ground.I’m pretty POed at Google as I’ve relied on Google Pages to host music links for my blog, a process which, for the non-techie, is complicated enough, without Google suddenly pulling the plug on me.For months I’ve been receiving an occasional email from Google alerting me to their intention to “move” my links to a new location, “Google Sites,” implying this will be automatic without any concerns on my part.Nuts, I thought, still another thing to learn, but OK, I’ve gone this far and I can do that.

However, this is not going to be automatic by any stretch of the imagination and, contrary to previous communications, this change will apparently render my music links inoperative.Here is their most recent email:

Dear Google Page Creator User:

As was previously announced, Google will soon be discontinuing operation of the Google Page Creator product. We will be migrating your Page Creator sites over to Google Sites so that they continue to operate with no work on your part. However, we've identified you as using Google Page Creator to host files that Sites doesn't support. We are writing to inform you that, as part of this migration, if you take no action to address this, your hosted files will likely break. If they are important then we suggest you move them to a different hosting service.

Contrary to what was posted in the blog post, the shut down and migration of Google Page Creator has been extended and will begin in a few weeks.

Thank you for your patience during this migration.

Sincerely,

The Google Sites Team

Google, Inc.

1600 Amphitheatre Parkway

Mountain View, CA 94043

You've received this mandatory service announcement email to update you about important changes to your Google Page Creator account.

Had I understood their intent months ago, I would have sought an alternative solution when I had broadband access.We’re now living on our boat and I’m dependent on a wireless dialup with slower speeds and bandwidth limitations.Therefore, these links will fail at a certain point.Thanks Google.

I’ve identified the music and their locations and here is a list, something I have to do anyway as a first step to address the matter: